Sign & Breath: A Stirring Examination of Voice in Poetry
Not so long ago, I sat in my local beauty salon waiting to begin an appointment with my hair stylist. I had just opened an advanced copy of Sign & Breath: Voice and the Literary Tradition. My stylist greeted me and ushered me into the shampoo chair, where she began running her fingers through my tight coils, detangling and delicately pulling apart each strand to prepare for washing. Once she was done, she began to tilt my head down into the bowl.
“Wait,” I said, gently stopping her, “May I read you a poem first?”
The stylist smiled and rested her hands at her sides. “Of course,” she said, “Let’s hear it.”
I began to read her the poem, “Mystique Academy,” by Claire Bateman, which detailed the work, study and practice of styling hair. My stylist’s eyes would light up as I landed on certain lines: “The first thing they taught us is that hair isn’t dead” or “We learned that a child may become tearful or agitated on the occasion of her first / hair-lengthening, and how to distract her.” And then, the final lines of the poem: “There’s nothing more paradoxical than our work—red burns the slowest, then blonde, then brown, // But black goes up in a flash, as though darkness excites the flame.” There was a moment of silence after I finished reading the poem—suddenly, the stylist’s hands were back in my hair.
“Who wrote that?” she asked. “Why…she sounds like one of us.”
I pondered the question along with what she was actually asking, which was: Who is the voice of this poem? How did this poet reflect my own experience so vividly and succinctly? How exactly do poets activate the power of voice in their work? These questions and more are brilliantly explored in the anthology Sign & Breath: Voice and the Literary Tradition. Co-editors Shanta Lee (an Art New England contributor) and Phillip Brady skillfully curated the poems in this collection, layering them with corresponding commentary to illuminate one of the most elusive and mysterious aspects of craft: voice. Each poet contributes to this ongoing and unending conversation by attempting to define what voice is and the ways in which we express it. One of the contributors to the anthology, Rita Banerjee explains:
“ Voice is the confidence with which a
writer expresses themselves on the page
with a certain kind of critical authority.…
I think when the voice is particularly
strong, it takes the author by surprise as
much as it does the reader. It’s that
embrace of style, artifice, and swagger
that all contributes to voice.”
The reader finds gems like these sprinkled throughout the collection; guiding us to dig deeper into not only what voice is but the way in which we as poets do voice.
The anthology itself is divided into four sections, each one unveiling rich and exciting poetry and thrilling discussions of the work as well. In this way, the anthology works on multiple levels—as a showcase of poets operating at the highest level as well as a useful craft tool for educators who might use the collection to instruct, gather information and to facilitate rigorous artistic discussion with their students. This collection reminds readers of the dynamic and ever-changing qualities of voice, calling on some of the most talented writers of our time to interrogate these concepts. The book features work by current Vermont Poet Laureate Bianca Stone, Kazim Ali, Carolyn Finney, Angelique Palmer, Tim Seibles and many more. Each one adds to this illustrious examination of voice, bringing in unique perspectives that feel substantive and spiritually rich, tapping into the vein of poetic expression.
The collection looks beyond voice and into more liminal and hybrid forms as well. The book encourages us to explore the concept of sign in poetry with depictions of visual poetry that evoke a different kind of voice – the kind that must be seen to be heard. One example of this is in “Heyday,” a visual poem by Shin Yu Pai, which was composed during her time as the Poet Laureate of Seattle. The piece is an intriguing example of eco-poetry, utilizing the movement of text and image to portray the city’s effort to extend tree canopies in the area. In the anthology, readers see how each animated panel is representative of how deeply the ecosystem is tied to the very heartbeat of the urban environment. Yu Pai comments on the irony of this piece and its relationship to voice writing, “This video poem does not have any voiceover, so the ways in which the phrases are broken up visually give some sense of how the work might be read, or where the breath might fall.” In this way, the poet demonstrates how signage in visual poetry can also operate as a guide, granting the reader a rare opportunity to see how the poem might be expressed apart from the page.
This is also evident in the poem “Cell/(ph) one: A Simultaneity In Four Voices” by Philip Metres, a polyvocal poem in which the reader is given a set of precise instructions about how they must engage with the poem before it begins. Metres writes:
Instructions for use:
Tear out this page, and then cut into four
columns and give to four readers. Have the
readers perform their monologues together
reading through the text twice. Line breaks
are slight pauses. Space breaks indicate
silences. Improvisation is welcome.
Here, we see the poet’s role in guiding the reader on how to interact with the poem and also the way it should be delivered to an audience. The instructions are precise, yet leave room for spontaneity among the four voices in the piece, allowing for a unique sense of poetic engagement that still feels organic amidst a specific structure.
Ultimately, Sign & Breath is a rich and thrilling offering that encourages writers, poets and poetry enthusiasts to think more deeply about the execution of voice within poetic craft. It encourages exciting conversation and productive discourse as it sets out to teach readers how to interrogate this level of expression. Each voice in this collection operates like a slice from an apple—each piece different in its own way yet still centered, deliciously, from the same luscious core.
—Skye Jackson